I was thinking the other day, in 14 years of professional employment, I have never been fired. I’ve held jobs with a half dozen employers and I’ve always initiated the job change. Usually leaving a job Friday to start a new job on a Monday.
So, tell your stories of being fired, please. Was it deserved or bogus? Did it affect your future positively or not?
I was fired once. In 1998. In my mind it was a temporary job, something to pay the bills in a new city until I could find something I really wanted to do. I was a ‘weight loss counselor’ - which is to say, I had to get people to buy weight loss products whether they needed it or not. I wasn’t very good at it, and I didn’t like doing it. I felt guilty. The program seemed like BS to me. When they found out I was looking for another job, (someone told on me!) they terminated me under the 3 month probation deal. I was relieved and was hired doing something meaningful a few weeks later.
I did feel bad for awhile about getting fired though. ME! FIRED?
I was “downsized”, does that count? The only plus to downsizing is that it came with a severance package which made the jobless time much smoother. Was it deserved? Well, it was not based on my performance. My reviews were always at least better than average. I happened to be working on a project that was ending just as the next wave of downsizing hit. Poor timing, I guess. There is good and bad in he change, but it’s too early to tell about the long term effects.
I was fired once. I worked as a waitress/bus girl at a family-owned restaurant. After I’d been there about 2 months, the place was sold and the new owners fired EVERYONE in order to staff it with their own people. The place closed down less than a year later.
I was fired from a dead-end job I was afraid to leave, and it was one of the best things to happen to me, ever.
Two weeks before, our managers had a company-wide meeting in which they told us their belt-tightening measures. One measure was that we were no longer allowed to take lunches. (I know. Of course, it’s illegal. They did it anyway.) After working like this a couple weeks, I got fed up and walked out 90 minutes early one night. I was fired immediately.
It was emotionally devastating, despite the fact that I hated the job, wanted to leave, and KNEW it would be a change for the better.
I was laid off from a bookstore once, after breaking my thumb. The owner had realized that he had too many people staffing the store, and I was the last one hired. He was kind of a nut; two months later, after he had let too many people go, he had his stepson call people to see if they’d be willing to come back and work for him again. I did go back and work for him, but then quit a little while later after I remembered what a complete nutjob he was.
A firing ended my promising department store menswear sales career.
They said I had a “bad attitude!”
No duh!
I got laid off once, when the GWBush recession first hit and my company shrank 75%.
I was fired once, years ago, for insubordination. 
I was doing collections for a large manufacturer. The branch manager was known for being impossible to work for and there was quite a bit of employee turn-over as a result.
He had a nasty habit of extending terms for select customers, then forgetting he had done so. From time to time, he would look at the ageing reports and call me on the carpet about these “overdue” accounts.
One day he called me into his office to ream me about a client that was about 120 days overdue. They were into us for a fair chunk of change, a few hundred grand, IIRC. He had, of course, extended their terms himself. I reminded him, yet again, and he flipped out, yelled something about “making excuses” and accused me of not trying hard enough to collect the account.
This understandably pissed me off. I admit, I lost my temper and told him that he was full of shit. He fired me on the spot, natch. Heh.
These things sometimes work out for the best, though. I went on to much bigger and better things.
Not so much fired but they hinted to me that I needed to look around and find something else as quickly as I could.
It was because I was involved with someone in the same office.
The company had no policy on employees dating. He was not my superior. A jealous woman in the office got it all started and would not rest until both of us left the company.
I left and went on to MUCH better things and so did he.
3 1/2 years later we are still married and have a great family. 
I worked for 4 years for a man who was between his 36th and 40th year as boss. Things ran really smoothly under his benign control, boy.
He retired at the end of my 4th year. 6 months of searching ensued during which all of us, in a panic, hoped and sought for any way for anyone to be hired except his 14-year second in command, a man whom we all knew well.
His second in command got the job, and promptly fired us all. Since he did not have authority to fire us, he relieved us of all duties instead, and recommended we finish our leftover work. I can read, thank you.
He then reinstated only the people who were not married. He wanted total devotion.
It put me through stress I never expected to reach the levels it did, and the stress lasted for about 2 months.
It was seriously miserable to endure through those months until the next job.
He is currently losing the job, three and a half years later.
This is putting me through joy like I cannot describe.
If you’re never fired unjustly, you will never know this joy.
Worth being fired for this.
I do envy the Doper who was fired for insubordination, though.
I was sort of fired from my job at an aquarium fish store. When I was first hired the boss told me he’ll “put me on for a few weeks and see what happens after that.” Well, after a few weeks, I was told not to come back.
Mostly my fault. I really didn’t know enough about fishkeeping to be working there.
“I do envy the Doper who was fired for insubordination, though.”
Yeah, you gotta love that!
My own story could have been better. After I was fired (by a printing company) I became a graphic designer, and could have gone back to the company that fired me AS A CLIENT!!
But we never chose them as a vendor.
I’ve been fired once. Back in 2000. Really sucked.
Of course, everybody else was fired too, as it was an internet company that ran out of money. So typical it isn’t even worth describing in detail; it would be like a dot-bomb mad lib.
I was bummed and nearly vegetative for a couple of months before I started trying to get my shit together. Then a former boss from a previous job called me and said she had an opportunity at the new place she had moved to, and she’d heard through the grapevine that I was available.
Now I work at a much better internet company that isn’t about to run out of money any time soon.
Fired several times:
Sales at a radio station. I deserved it: I didn’t sell anything.
Assitant at a Volunteer Center: Funding reduced, downsized
Tech writer for a software company: they had no idea what they were doing. One reason was because they didn’t like my work – a 12-page brochure I had knocked off in an afternoon without editing because someone needed something to show.
Computer graphics specialist: company changed its focus and I was out.
Stock supervisory analyst/desktop publisher: Decided to have someone else do it.
I’ve been fired twice. The first time was during the 30-day probation time, and although they said things “just weren’t working out” I find it ironic that it happened the day after I revealed I had a medical problem to my supervisor. :rolleyes:
The second time was several months ago… although this is not the official reason listed on my separation notice, the reason initially given was that there were “numerous phone calls and emails from concerned coworkers regarding my religion and my private website, which contained offensive information regarding my religion.” They fired my immediate supervisor an hour before they fired me, basically for refusing to follow their orders to fire me. Lawsuit is pending.
I should have gotten fired from one job, but luckily I was serving out the last 3 days of my 2-week notice when I began a verbal attack on my boss with “Jesus Tapdancing Christ, you bloody ninny…” THAT felt good. 
bobkitty - Damn, what religion are you?
I was sort of quasi-fired a year and a half ago from a waitressing job. At the time, I was working four days a week at my current job, and looking for a little extra cash. I was also working on a film project with a friend of mine. The waitressing began to immediately eat into too much of my time for filming, until one day I finally blew off work to shoot. When I came in the next day to quit, they told me they’d figured I wasn’t coming back in the first place. So, that was that. Nothing spectacular.
I got Alias fired once, though. We were both working at hostesses in the main dining room of a local resort. She’d been there a few years at that point, and was knowledgeable enough about the place that our fellow employees treated her more or less like one of the managers. In fact, they probably respected her more, as the managers were idiots. So one evening, it’s a little slow, and she and I were doodling on scrap paper. I drew a couple of things that were possibly offensive to religious types, intending to share them only with my godless atheist friends. One of the managers saw the drawings, was informed that they were mine, and let the issue pass. Somehow, the drawings got left on the hostess station overnight, and must have offended one of the day hostesses, because she complained. Now here’s the interesting part of the story. Despite the fact that one of the managers knew that the drawings were mine, she now decided that Alias must have been the culprit, and fired her. And that’s how I got my best friend fired.
Let’s see…I was laid off from a dot com what downsized about 75% of their workforce over a year in three rounds. I got it in the first round since I was in marketing and got three months full severance. People who got laid off in the third round got two weeks severence. I literally started my new job the DAY the severence ran out, so with unemployment, I MADE money from that!
I was fired back in high school when I ran errands for a metal foundry in Oxnard, CA. The boss’ wife asked me to buy ‘love’ stamps for her at the post office. They were out of them, so I got her regular ones. She threw a fit. Shortly thereafter, I told a co-worker what a bitch she was, right as she was walking into the room behind me…fired on the spot.
I was fired once from my job at a ski resort. I worked in the Main Dining Room doing room service, bussing, hosting, and running food orders to a downstairs bar. One night, the dining room got slammed and my manager told me to take some tables. I took about three so I could keep doing everything else. He asked me to take another table (an eight top I think). I told him no. He told me to take it again. I told him that he should get out the waiting list. He fired me for “insubordination.”
The next day, the assistant manager called me and told me that both he and my managers boss wanted me back. I was back three days later. That was fun. My manager left me alone for the rest of the year.
Similar to look!ninjas, I was quasi-fired from being a senior staffer in the dorms. My GPA fell below the requirement, so I resigned in order to bring it back up. I reapplied for my job after doing so, and I got it back. Prior to starting my job again, the assistant director of the department took a better job elsewhere, and a woman I butted heads with repeatedly (we had a mutual hatred of each other) assumed the role. I was “let go” just before starting my job again.
She said that I hadn’t fulfilled all the GPA requirements (my cumulative had to be 2.5 and my previous academic semester had to be a 2.5). I was in summer classes at the time, and she refused to allow my summer grades to be factored in. The previous AD and I had agreed that the summer grades would be factored in. She claimed that there was no evidence of it, so I was out of there. Again.
It bugged me a bit, but not too much. Since I had quit I had been having second thoughts about going back. I was more upset that the decision hadn’t been mine, that a key point of my returning to the dorms “could not be found,” and that she had no intention of telling me I was gone again until I returned from the summer (I was tipped off by a friend working for her).
Other than one instance, I’ve only resigned twice. The first was the time I already mentioned. The second was when I worked tech support. The hours I got were bad, and I was getting yelled at, cursed at, and threatened way too much. I lasted a month in that job.